Pope Clement XII

Financially shrewd pontiff used papal cash for building projects

Pope Clement XII commission many
architectural works in Rome and Ancona

Lorenzo Corsini, who during his time as Pope Clement XII substantially built up the wealth of the Vatican, was born on this day in 1740 in Florence.

While he was pontiff, Clement XII began the construction of the Trevi Fountain, established the Capitoline Museums in Rome, and carried out extensive public building works in the Papal States.

Corsini was the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano, and Elisabetta Strozzi, who was from an old Florentine noble family. He was a nephew of Cardinal Neri Corsini and a distant relative of Saint Andrew Corsini.

After studying at the Jesuit College in Rome, he went to the University of Pisa where he achieved a doctorate in both civil law and canon law.

He practised law under his uncle, Cardinal Corsini, but after the death of both his uncle and father, he renounced his right to become head of his family.

Instead, he purchased from Pope Innocent XI, for 30,000 scudi, a position as a prelate. He subsequently devoted his time and his money to the enlargement of the library bequeathed to him by his uncle.  His home in Piazza Navona went on to become the centre of Rome’s scholarly and artistic life.

In 1690, Corsini was made titular Archbishop of Nicomedia and he was chosen as nuncio to Vienna, receiving a dispensation from Pope Alexander VIII because he had not yet been ordained as a priest. He did not proceed to the imperial court, because Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor, declared that he had the right to select the nuncio from a list of three names furnished by the pope.

Corsini was appointed as governor general of the Castel Sant’Angelo in 1696. Under Pope Clement XI, his talents were used as a courtier and in 1706 he was named as Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, and he was also retained as papal treasurer.

Pope Benedict XIII made him Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and he was also appointed as the Cardinal-Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli and Cardinal Bishop of Frascati.

Luigi Vanvitelli was Pope
Clement XII's architect of choice

Under Benedict XIII the finances of the Papal States had been drained by the cardinal who had been looking after them. After Pope Benedict’s death, the College of Cardinals selected Corsini as his successor, who was by then aged 78.

After he became Pope in 1730, Corsini took the papal name Clement in honour of Pope Clement XI, who had made him a cardinal.

He restored the Papal finances, demanding restitution from the people who had abused the trust of his predecessor. Soon money was pouring into his treasury, enabling him to undertake extensive building programmes in Rome and the Papal States.

Clement XII restored the Arch of Constantine, paved the streets of Rome, and widened Via del Corso.

As part of his aim to improve the wellbeing of his subjects through economic development, Clement XII granted Ancona in Le Marche freeport status and commissioned the architect Luigi Vanvitelli to redesign the ancient port.

He also commissioned Vanvitelli to build the Lazzaretto of Ancona as a quarantine station for the port.

After Clement XII’s death in 1740 his remains were transferred to a tomb in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, for which he had commissioned the building of a new facade after organising a competition, won by Alessandro Galilei, who completed it in 1735.

The Arch of Clementine with the
Arch of Trajan in the foreground

Travel tip:

The architect Luigi Vanvitelli  worked extensively in Ancona in the 1730s under Pope Clement XII, who commissioned him to modernize and expand Ancona’s maritime infrastructure, which had fallen into decline. His contributions included redesigning the port layout, building the Molo Nuovo (New Pier) and most notably the Lazzaretto, also known as the Mole Vanvitelliana, a striking pentagonal complex built on an artificial island, which originally served as a quarantine station for travelers and goods. He also built the Chiesa del Gesù and Casa degli Esercizi spirituali - a church and adjoining spiritual retreat house facing the port, and the Arch of Clementine, which he built just a few metres away from the Arch of Trajan, built 1600 years earlier by the Senate and people of Rome in honour of the Emperor Trajan, who expanded the port of the city out of his own pocket, improving the docks and the fortifications.

Stay in Ancona with Expedia

The statue of Pope Clement XII in
front of the San Domenico church

Travel tip:

Also in Ancona, in front of the Chiesa di San Domenico and looking out across the rectangular Piazza del Plebescito, is a statue of Pope Clement XII, the work of the sculptor Agostino Cornacchini, which was erected in 1738. It was originally destined for the portico of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, where it remained for just under a year before being moved to Ancona at the suggestion of the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, in recognition of the work he had commissioned to modernise the port and the city.  Piazza del Plebiscito is also known locally as Piazza del Papa. The Chiesa di San Domenico, at the top of the square’s incline, is a Baroque church built by Carlo Marchionni and completed in 1778. The interior is notable for two outstanding paintings, the Annunciation by Guercino in the first chapel on the left, and Titian’s altarpiece, The Crucifixion. 

Ancona hotels from Hotels.com

More reading:

How the election of Antipope Clement VII sparked a split in Catholic Church

Pope Innocent XII, the pontiff who ended the practice of nepotism in the papal appointments

The flamboyant pope who helped make books available to ordinary people

Also on this day:

1763: The birth of musician Domenico Dragonetti 

1794: The birth of opera singer Giovanni Battista Rubini

1883: The birth of painter and mosaicist Gino Severini

1906: Vesuvius eruption kills more than 200

1973: The birth of footballer Marco Delvecchio

Home

Agostino Steffani – composer

Baroque musician and cleric who features in modern literature

Agostino Steffani, depcited in a 1714
portrait by Gerhard Kappers

A priest and diplomat as well as a singer and composer, Agostino Steffani was born on this day in 1654 in Castelfranco Veneto near Venice.

Details of his life and works have recently been brought to the attention of readers of contemporary crime novels because they were used by the American novelist, Donna Leon, as background for her 2012 mystery The Jewels of Paradise.

Steffani was admitted as a chorister at St Mark’s Basilica in Venice while he was still young and in 1667 the beauty of his voice attracted the attention of Count Georg Ignaz von Tattenbach, who took him to Munich.

Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria, paid for Steffani’s education and granted him a salary, in return for his singing.

In 1673 Steffani was sent to study in Rome, where he composed six motets. The original manuscripts for these are now in a museum in Cambridge.

On his return to Munich Steffani was appointed court organist. He was also ordained a priest and given the title of Abbate of Lepsing. His first opera, Marco Aurelia, was written for the carnival and produced at Munich in 1681.

Part of the score of Duetto da Camera Pria ch'io faccia by
Agostino Steffani, which is in the British Library in London

The only manuscript score of it known to exist is in the Royal Library at Buckingham Palace. He followed this with six more operas written between 1685 and 1688.

Steffani then accepted the post of Kapellmeister at the court of Hanover where he showed great kindness to the young Handel, who was just beginning his career.

He composed an opera called Henrico Leone for the opening of the new opera house, which enhanced his reputation. He composed several more operas for the same theatre and the scores were brought to London by the Elector of Hanover, George Louis, when he became King George I. They are now preserved in Buckingham Palace.

Steffani went on diplomatic missions on behalf of George Louis’s father, Ernest Augustus, when he became Elector of Hanover and this work was recognised by Pope Innocent XI who granted him high honours.

George Louis, later King George I of England

By then a respected cleric, Steffani continued to write operas using the name of his secretary, although one score that has been judged to be his work bears no name.

In 1724 the Academy of Ancient Music in London elected him as honorary president for life and in return he sent them a Stabat Mater and three madrigals, which have been considered to be in advance of the age in which they were written. Steffani also wrote many beautiful cantatas for two voices, the scores for which are now in the British Museum.

The composer visited Italy for the last time in 1727, where he met up with Handel again. Steffani died in 1728 while on diplomatic business in Frankfurt.

In Donna Leon’s novel The Jewels of Paradise, a young musicologist is hired in Venice to find the rightful heirs to fictional treasure that Steffani left in trunks that had not been opened for centuries. Donna Leon’s interest in Baroque opera inspired her to write this story, weaving fact with fiction as she takes details from Steffani’s past and creates a present-day mystery involving two avaricious Venetians who think they are heirs to Steffani’s fortune.

The Cathedral at Castelfranco Veneto

Travel tip:

Castelfranco Veneto, where Steffani was born, is an ancient walled town in the Veneto region of Italy. It is also famous for being the birthplace of Renaissance artist, Giorgione. The Cathedral inside the walls contains one of his finest works, Madonna with St Francis and Liberalis, which was painted in 1504.

The Biblioteca Marciana in Venice

Travel tip:

In Donna Leon’s novel The Jewels of Paradise, the main character, the musicologist Caterina Pellegrini, carries out a lot of her research into the life of Agostino Steffani at the Biblioteca Marciana, which is an elegant building opposite the Doge’s Palace in the Piazzetta, off St Mark’s Square in Venice.

Home